


Paperclips And Nail Glue

by Smokeycut



Category: Spider-Man - Fandom
Genre: AU, Background Gwen Stacy/Felicia Hardy, Brief nudity in one scene for comedic purposes, F/F, M/M, MJ is a guy, One Shot, as time goes on, it isnt really described though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 18:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12090747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smokeycut/pseuds/Smokeycut
Summary: Peter Parker doesn't know where his life will lead, but so long as he has his friends, it'll all work out. He's sure of that.





	Paperclips And Nail Glue

**Author's Note:**

> I've been a Spider-Man fangirl since I was a little kid, but it occurred to me that I've never written any fanfic for it before. Figured I'd remedy that, drawing some inspiration from my own headcanons, AUs I've read, and Andrew Garfield's plans to have Peter be bi in Amazing Spider-Man 3. Sadly, we'll never get that, but we can still have this.

Peter Parker is 15 and his life is crashing down around him. The spider bit him and now he's standing on top of the world looking down. Making money off of underground wrestling matches, feeling the rush and flow of adrenaline each and every time he knocks his opponent flat on their ass. It doesn't matter how skilled they are, what powers _they_ have. He's always better. He always wins. He forgets how to lose. 

Life gives him a reminder. Uncle Ben falls to the ground 15 feet ahead of him, life drains from his body in a pool of deep, deep red. Peter cries out, begging someone, _anyone_ to do something. He could have. He could have. He could have. He didn't. He doesn't sleep that night. He cries himself to sleep. 

The next day he sews together a red mask and draws a spider on an old hoodie of his. If there's anything he can do to make it up to Uncle Ben, it's this.

\---

Peter is sitting in biology and Gwen looks at him, her eyes gentle beneath the heavy makeup. She doesn't know what it feels like, but that doesn't stop her from feeling for him. He's her best friend in the world, but there's nothing she can say to make it better. But she can distract him, just for a moment.

She takes two paperclips and some nail glue from her bag, then pulls off her black headband. She bends the steel into triangles and sticks them to the hairband, then puts in back on when they've dried. She pokes Peter's shoulder and her black lips curl into her best cheshire grin. He lets out a small snicker and pokes her nose, which just serves to fuel her fire. 

Gwen Stacy knows many things. She knows that she has liquid eyeliner in her bag. She knows that, in a pinch, liquid eyeliner can be used to draw bad cat makeup. She does the math. It makes Peter laugh a bit harder, seeing his best friend go crosseyed while making herself look like a fool. 

"I see you've found your Halloween costume," Peter says with a small smile and a blush. 

A smile is good. She did her job.

\---

Gwen Stacy is turning 16 and there are only three people at her party, counting the birthday girl herself. Peter shows up in a ratty blue hoodie, making it four. He sees her mother and father standing in the living room, struggling to make their stereo system play the right playlist. Gwen takes him by the hand and her hand is so warm and he thinks her dress is so cute, in a dorky "I shop exclusively at Hot Topic and am proud to say it" kind of way. 

She leads him up to her bedroom and his mind is sent running. He's been in her room a million and a half times since they met in the third grade, but this feels different. His heart is racing. Maybe she sees him the way he sees her? Maybe she's noticed how he has muscles now, despite never working out. That he switched to wearing contacts. That he learned Axe makes you smell like piss and stopped using it.

Maybe isn't quite right. She shows him the Nintendo Switch that her parents bought her and tells him with the utmost of certainty that they're going to play Bomberman. He nods his head and tries to not glance over at her too often as they blow each other to kingdom come over and over.

They eat ice cream cake after dinner, and Gwen makes a silent wish that nobody could possibly guess at. A wish that sets her own heart racing, the way Peter's is whenever their hands touch in passing.

"Happy birthday, Gwen," he wishes her before passing out in his sleeping bag at midnight.

"It was," she tells him.

\---

Herman Schultz laughs as the dust rises in the air. A bank vault door lies shattered at his feet and his gauntlets crackle with energy. All the money is his for the taking, until a red and blue clad teen shoves him to the ground.

"Webhead!" Shocked shouts, swinging a fist wildly as he stands, failing to do anything productive.

"Y'know, that isn't a very demeaning nickname. Usually people call me a lot worse," Spider-Man says casually while webbing the gauntlets together. He punches Shocker in the solar plexus and checks his messages until the cops arrive.

Aunt May needs him to pick up some eggs.

\---

Gwen drops down next to Peter's side on the bus, her purple tulle skirt scratches against his hand before he moves it to his knee to make room. She looks around the seat that blocks their view, leaning into the aisle and watching as people filter onto the bus.

"I'm gonna let you in on a little secret," she says in a hushed tone, whipping her head back towards Peter.

"You're Spider-Man?" He asks, deadpan enough that you'd be forgiven for thinking it an honest question.

"I'm in love with Liz Allen."

"Oh" is all he can say at first, as his mind processes the words. He can't tell at first if she's serious or not, but the worried look on her face fills in the gap. "Do you know if she likes you back?"

"Flash said I look like a vampire vomited on me, and she told him to stop being an asshole, so I think I have a shot."

"Well thats good," he says. He means it too. He still likes her, but that doesn't matter anymore, if it ever did. If her happiness would come from dating Liz Allen, he'd do his best to help make it happen.

\---

Peter is 16 and Gwen is in his bedroom, while Aunt May watches Magnum P.I. reruns in the other room. Gwen hands him a red box with a blue bow and tells him to open it. He cuts the bow with a pair of scissors, pulls the top off of the box and stares in disbelief.

A red and blue costume, with black web patterns across the red sections and a giant spider on the chest. It comes with a mask, much better than his own. Black and white lenses for eyes, rather than the thin black netting he had used. 

"How did you..." he begins, but she just grins in his face as he drifts off.

"I've seen you open your backpack more times than I can count. You keep it under your folders, but it's still a bright red and blue costume. Figured you could use a better one, like what Captain America has."

"It's amazing, Gwen. Thank you so much," he says with a slight crack in his voice. He doesn't have to keep this hidden from her. Not anymore. They can both keep each other's secrets.

"I also got my hands on one of my dad's old police scanners!"

" _sweet_."

\---

"Dr Octavius is at the school, and he's got his tentacles on. _Hurry_." Gwen turns off her cell phone and stuffs it back in her bag, then braves a peek out of the classroom's window. One of their teachers freaked out and was smashing up the school with a set of clawed robotic tendrils. It isn't the first time he had done this.

"Doc Ock! Think fast!" Spider-Man shouts while flinging webs at his old mentor. He has a hard time joking around while fighting Doctor Octavius, and he knows it. How can he crack jokes when the man can't even help what he's doing? People say there's comedy in tragedy, but he isn't sure that's true. At least, not when you're so close to the tragedy.

The Doctor knocks the webs away and lashes out with a tentacle, missing his web-slinging target and hitting a locker instead. He tries to curl it back around to encircle Spider-Man, only to be tense up and fall to the ground. Flash Thompson stood behind him with a small, handheld taser and smiled at Spider-Man.

"I just helped Spider-Man," he whispered with fanboy joy.

\---

Peter and Gwen are 18 and they're in college and their setup is more professional than ever before. The police scanner, multiple monitors for Gwen's custom PC, a new suit that has lining just for use in winter...

They've got it down. They're like The Avengers, except totally not. And there's a boy.

His name is Watson. 

"Face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot!" He had said when Aunt May introduced them. His skin was a beautiful deep brown, his hair was tied back in a ponytail of multicolored dreadlocks and he made Peter's heart pound like a god damned jackhammer. He had told Peter his name was Michael, but to call him Watson.

\---

Watson figures it out when he barges into Gwen's apartment with a pizza and six pack of beer, only to find Gwen helping Peter get his gloves unstuck from a malfunctioning web shooter.

"It's not what it looks like," Peter starts.

"It's for a cosplay!" Gwen finishes.

Watson just smiles and laughed. He always knew there was something about Peter that he liked. This just makes it even clearer.

\---

Peter is in a lab, some horror show his college biology professor had set up in his free time. He calls himself The Jackal, and Peter wishes that just once he could have a science teacher who didn't go off the deep end. Various experiments hang in glass tubes, suspended by cords and tubes and gelatinous material he doesn't recognize. At the far end of the room, there's one more tube, all alone.

He approaches it, and Michael says something over the comms that Gwen had set up, but Peter doesn't hear it. The whole world falls away around him in that moment, leaving just two people left.

Peter, and the mirror image of himself who stares back at him from behind the glass.

\---

Peter takes him home, and Gwen and Watson stare in shock. Jackal is still on the loose, but that's the farthest thing from anybody's mind. There are two Peters, and they're very confused for very different reasons.

"Are you my evil clone?" One of them asks, keeping his mask on just to make it clear which is which. He doesn't need to, though. The other still doesn't have any clothes.

"No, I'm Flash Thompson and I let myself go," the nude Peter snarks. "Yeah, I guess I'm your clone or whatever. I still feel like I'm myself though. I'm still Peter."

"You can't be Peter. _I'm_ Peter. Aunt May sewed my name on my backpack and everything."

"Mine too."

They stare at each other a bit, wondering what on earth to do. Then Watson breaks the tension, as he's become used to doing.

"Can we please get him some clothes?" He asks, looking at Gwen. "I feel weird having a naked Peter on my couch." Weird in a good way, he wisely leaves out.

Gwen leaves and comes back a minute later with jeans and an old blue hoodie of Peter's. The naked Peter thanks her quietly, then awkwardly heads to the bathroom to change. Halfway through, he realizes the privacy was pointless, considering what had already been seen. He decides he doesn't care. There's more important things to figure out, like who the hell he's supposed to be if he can't be himself.

He looks in the medicine cabinet mirror as the other talk in hushed tones on the other side of the door. His eyes are the same as they always had been, his lips, his cheeks, his hair, all the same. He went to bed one night and woke up in a tube, and now they're telling him he was created in a vat less than a week ago. 

"If Uncle Ben were here, what would he tell me?" He asks himself in a whisper. He closes his eyes and sees Ben standing there, beaming at him, proud as ever. He hadn't earned that pride. Not with his mistakes. They weren't even his mistakes though, were they? And Ben wasn't his uncle...

"Of course I'm your uncle, kiddo," the imaginary Uncle Ben tells him. "The memories make the man, and you've got those. You always will. Just like you've got the power. And you know what comes with that. I told you, remember?"

"Yeah... yeah, you did. But you also told him." He looks down at his hoodie and he remembers wearing it at Gwen's 16th birthday party. She looked like such a dork. And now she had seen him naked.

"Cloning is a bit above my pay grade, but you're still _you_. You're still my nephew, kid. Just because there was a split, it doesn't change whats inside."

He nods, and he opens the door. Immediately, Peter and Gwen and Watson go silent and look at him.

"It's been a while since I've seen you in that hoodie..." Gwen starts, but she trails off before saying his name. She isn't sure what to call him, the Peter who isn't Peter. But he knows.

"Ben. Call me Ben."

\---

Peter is dangling upside down in an alley and it's raining and Watson is just _standing_ there. He brings his hands up and peels off Peter's mask just enough, just far enough to free his lips. He leans in and Peter's lips part and he's so awkward and bad at kissing but it doesn't matter. They are the only thing that matters in that moment. Not as individuals, not as two young men sorting through confusing feelings and fluttering hearts, not as a hero and his friend who has the coolest goddamn hair. This matters because it's two who come together to be one. Two people who were happy on their own but even happier together. Peter and Watson. Spider-Man and MJ.

The rain lightens up, slowing to a drizzle. Each drop makes the moment feel more real than the last. They look at each other and say nothing. They already know everything that the other wants to say. Silence, in this moment, is golden. Only the sound of falling rain and the rhythm of each other's breath fill the air. 

Peter really did hit the jackpot.

\---

It feels like a lifetime since this all began. Peter can hardly believe that it's been 15 years since Gwen made him that costume, but it has. Now everyone has jobs and lives of their own and he's been fighting the same villains for so long that high schoolers hadn't even been born yet when he first threw down with Green Goblin. It's feels like it's been so long, but it also feels like just yesterday that he was on that field trip. That his life changed forever.

And right now? Right now Watson is buying a ring before he goes in for his first day as the lead on some new police drama. His smile is warm enough to melt ice and he can't wait to pop the question at dinner.

And right now? Peter is teaching a science class at his old high school, doing his best to pass on his knowledge. He gushes about nuclear physics and tries to put it in language they understand, and he sees a spark in a few eyes. That's more than enough for him to work with. He looks down at his left hand, and he swears that the spider bite is still there after all these years. Nobody but him ever seems to notice it though. But that's alright. Everything is alright.

And right now? Gwen is on a date with a pretty blonde named Felicia, who she has a sneaking suspicion might just be the cat burglar that Peter has been chasing down for two years now. But she's cute and pays for their meal, so Gwen lets it slide. Her taste in fashion has matured, but only so much. People have begun finding it endearing, rather than embarrassing. At the very least, Felicia seems to like it.

And right now? Ben Reilly is brewing coffee for one of his favorite regulars. He created this business himself, and under his care it's flourished. His hair is blonde now, it has been for quite some time. Ever since he began running around as Scarlet Spider and introducing himself as Peter's twin brother. These days, he feels as though they really are brothers, more than they are two versions of the same man. He's his own person, and he knows it.

And right now? There's a bright young teen named Miles Morales, who is trying to figure out what's happening to his body. How he got these abilities, and if he should try and get in touch with Spider-Man and Scarlet Spider. Would they accept him as being like them? Would they mind that he built his own web shooters? Would they teach him, make him their sidekick? Would they think his costume is cool? He thinks they would.


End file.
